So you’re living in the UK and dream of giving your dog’s genes a chance to live on in a cloned body? One South Korean firm is willing to offer a 70 per cent discount if you pose for the cameras and are not expecting them to copy the personality too.

The firm, Sooam Biotech, has been commercially cloning pets for
years, with the majority of its customers coming from the US. The
task is currently priced at $100,000, but the winner will receive
a considerable slash from that tag. Contenders are encouraged to
send a 500-word essay along with photos, videos of up to 5
minutes, and other material explaining why their dog should be
cloned.

There are no restrictions on the breed, sex, size or age of the
dog, but the winner must be prepared for the media appearances
that would come into his or her life, along with the furry clone.
Submissions are accepted until July 1.

The cloning technology itself is following the well-established
routine. Sooam researchers will extract DNA from a viable skin
cell taken from the dog and implant it into another dog’s egg
cell, which had been cleared of DNA beforehand. The resulting
embryo will then be implanted into a surrogate mother, which will
give birth to a cloned puppy some two months later.

The South Korean firm is headed by controversial researcher Hwang
Woo-suk, who rose to notoriety after falsifying research data in
his 2004 study of human embryotic stem cells. Sooam was among the
pioneers of dog cloning and also successfully cloned other
canines, such as wolves and coyotes. Last year it announced its
plans to recreate a woolly mammoth by extracting the extinct
animal’s DNA from frozen samples and incubating an embryo in an
elephant surrogate mother.

Pet cloning remains an ethically-controversial and niche
business. Critics say that rich people who spend thousands of
dollars on cloning their pets should instead help animal shelters
and adopt a new pet from one of those. There is also the
implication that cloning firms are misleading their clients,
because the technology can offer replication of the body, while
the behavior of the cloned pet may differ markedly from that of
the original.

"I think that personality is really what most people are
looking to clone," John Woestendiek, a dog cloning
investigator and author, told Live Science. "And I don't think
personality is clone-able."

Pet cloning may enjoy high media attention, but the market for it
is surprisingly small, according to BioArts International, a
US-based company that outsourced pet cloning to Sooam Biotech
before going out of business in 2009.

Just like Sooam in UK, BioArts promoted its services in America
with a 2008 competition offering free cloning. It received 237
applications, the firm said, eventually awarding the privilege to
a rescue dog which had reportedly found the last survivor of the
2001 terrorist attack in New York.